In the movie of “The Fugitive,” Doctor Richard Kimble isn’t very bright about changing his appearance. Initially he has a full beard, heavily gray, with dark hair. He looks like a million other guys. So what does he do? To “disguise” himself, he shaves off the beard and lightens his hair color. That’s stupid. Now he looks like Harrison Ford. He’s just made his pursuers’ job that much easier. Before that,they had to say, “Be on the lookout for a guy with a gray beard and dark hair.” But now they can say, “Be on the lookout for a guy who’s a dead ringer for Harrison Ford.”
Did he WANT to be caught?
PAD
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That’s why they didn’t call the movie “The Competent Fugitive.”
Apropos of nothing, I was recently impressed by how many of the minor (really minor) actors in this movie have gone on to big careers.
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Not only do you have early career Julianne Moore and Jane Lynch, you’ve also got Neil Flynn–later sitcom star of THE MIDDLE and SCRUBS (the latter of which did an episode about the character’s appearance in this movie.) Plus, of course, great character actors like Andreas Katsulas and Joey Pantoliano who were known quantities at the time, but who would go on to even more well-known roles.
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Clearly, the casting directors on that film really had an eye for talent.
Oh, and L. Scott Caldwell, a great actress who, tho’ still not a huge name, was arguably the best thing about LOST when she’d turn up as Rose…
He’s a genius compared to Obi-Wan Kenobi who’s idea of a brilliant disguise is to go back to his arch-enemy’s home planet under the moniker of “Old Ben Kenobi”.
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Even more amazingly it worked!!!. oh well, nobody ever said the Dark Side was very bright.
Kid couldn’t WAIT to get off that rock. Makes perfect sense that it wouldn’t occur to him that someone would WANT to be there.
Actually, I’m surprised Vader never went back there and atom bombed it from space, just to wipe out any Sandpeople he didn’t massacre the first time.
“And now you see that Evil will always triumph because Good is dumb.”
I am still waiting for Obi Wan to return more powerful than we can possibly imagine.
He didn’t say he’d RETURN more powerful, he said he’d BECOME more powerful. And he did…he cemented himself as a martyr in Luke’s eyes, making Luke very susceptible to…ah…suggestion from beyond the grave.
Geez, Peter, we have precious few solid remakes of 60’s TV shows, and you haveta go and ruin it for all of us!
No, no, it was brilliant. See, in that universe there never was an INDIANA JONES or STAR WARS movie, and no one’s ever heard of Harrison Ford.
Yes there was, except in the FUGITIVE universe, Indy was portrayed by Tom Selleck and Han by Christopher Walken.
🙂
Man, do I want to live in that universe…
OK, the first is entirely scary (Thank you, CBS… or NBC… or ABC… or whoever the heck wouldn’t let Selleck out of Magnum!) but the latter is rather intriguing. I wouldn’t mind seeing that… unless Jabba put the bounty on Walken-Solo’s head for dancing above the Rancor pit.
Did that universe’s Obi-Wan just happen to have just enough cowbell to hire the Falcon?
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Hey, his plan wasn’t really all that bad. We just didn’t get to see the full disguise he had in mind because once he had shaved he was never able to find a pair of black rimmed glasses. If he had only found a pair of those like he had originally planned to do then no one would have recognized him.
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True fact. It’s been proven that black rimmed glasses are all you need to full everyone around you insofar as who you really are for like 50 years at a time or more.
Then there was Big Daddy in KICK-ÃSS whose idea of a disguise was to go from a man with a mustache to a man with a longer mustache. (According to the IMDB this was Nicolas Cage’s idea.)
Well yeah, but in his defense, he also had a mask.
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PAD
Don’t forget the Adam West cadence.
Didn’t he darken his hair color?
I wasn’t aware that Harrison Ford exists in the Fugitive universe. 🙂
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Then again, maybe you’re right, Peter. His disguises was so bad, even the Janitor from Scrubs noticed him in the subway near the end of the film, apparently during one of his evenings moonlighting as a Chicago cop.
His disguises was so bad, even the Janitor from Scrubs noticed him in the subway near the end of the film, apparently during one of his evenings moonlighting as a Chicago cop.
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No, he didn’t. He was noticed by a guy who was sitting directly across from him in the train car, because the guy was reading a newspaper that had a picture of Harrison Ford on the front page. And the guy looked at the picture, looked at Kimble, and said to himself, “Holy crap, that guy looks just like Harrison Ford.” And he went into the next car and alerted the Janitor in his night job, and that brought the Janitor into the train car.
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PAD
“And the guy looked at the picture, looked at Kimble, and said to himself, “Holy crap, that guy looks just like Harrison Ford.””
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And, ya gotta admit, if it’s possible to nonverbally chew the scenery, the actor playing that guy did just that with his look of recognition followed by the look that says “I gotta get away from this dude.”
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Plus he was wearing a coat with a crazy fur collar, if I recall correctly, which somehow helped sell the whole thing… 😉
Which raises the question: Just how many frequent flyer miles can a California janitor rack up when he has a night job in Chicago?
He was probably hoping that everyone would just mistake him for the real Harrison Ford. Think about it. If you’d run into him somewhere, you would probably think ‘Hey! There’s Harrison Ford!’, not ‘Hey, there’s that wanted fugitive who looks like Harrison Ford.’ That latter might occur to you later on, but by that time he’d be gone.
I was in new york once and saw a taxi cab driver who looked exactly like Osama Bin Laden. And I thought A-nice to see that the cab driver did not change his look just because one bad guy happened to share his face and B-actually it would be genius if OBL hid out in NYC. People would never turn him in, they’d just say “Hey, you look like Osama Bin laden and he’d say “Yeah, I get that a lot.”
There was actually a short-lived show called I GET THAT A LOT where celebrities would work at a job and tell people that they weren’t the celebrity but they hear it a lot (and variations of “would I be working here if I was really them?”). At the end, the celebs revealed their identity to the people. Some of the celebs and jobs they had:
Gene Simmons: new-age store owner
Paris Hilton: gas station attendant
Snoop Dogg: parking cars
Heidi Klum: pizzeria employee
It was a cute idea, but also it was also practically the definition of a one-joke show.
Did anyone ever see a show called Bakersfield, PD? It didn’t last very long. One of the cops on the show had a girlfriend who drew caricatures of celebrities, and the police department used her as a sketch artist once. But instead of drawing what the witnesses described, she just drew more celebrities. Later on in the episode, they had a line-up with a bunch of suspects who all looked liked different celebrities. I remember they had a Rod Stewart, and a young Sinatra, but I don’t remember who else they had.
I think you and Sarah Silverman had that cab driver. She mentioned having a cab driver like that who inspired an episode of her show.
Didn’t they basically do this in one of the Ocean’s films with Julia Roberts, where people confused the character with her?
Yep. In Ocean’s Twelve, there was a running bit in which Linus would start to comment that, “Tess looks like….” then would be cut off by a warning never to say that around her, without ever completing the initial thought. Ultimately, we find out who he thinks she resembles when he recruits her to the scheme, convincing her to impersonate Julia Roberts.
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–Daryl
Also, wasn’t the Ocean’s Twelve thing even more “meta” than that? If I recall correctly, Tess is convinced to impersonate a *pregnant* Julia Roberts so as to attract more paparazzi attention. Roberts wasn’t pregnant during the filming of the movie, but actually was by the time it was in theaters.
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Unless I’m misremembering the timeline, of course…
Not sure where this Reply will appear, but in response to Mary Warner’s point, I *so* wish they would release BAKERSFIELD P.D. on dvd. And yet every frickin’ minute of TWO AND A HALF MEN is readily available from so many places…
see, this is why the glasses as Clark kent thing works – nobody would get furtherKthan “you look just like” before dismissing the idea.
You know, this is what the president should do some time (and who knows? Maybe he does. I probably would if I were president): A motorcade leaves the White House and heads off towards, say, Camp David. Ten minutes later, a beat up old Chevy pulls out of a parking garage a few blocks away, and heads towards, say Andrews Air Force Base. The driver’s dressed casually. Maybe wearing a baseball cap. Other drivers glance at him. “Hey, that looks like the president. Nah. Couldn’t be.”
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Maybe this hypothetical misdirection is so the president can fly off to engage in sensitive negotiations or intervene on the QT in some trouble spot. Whatever the case, would you expect to see the president driving by himself in some old junker? My guess would be no.
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Just popped into my head (I forget the issue, so I can’t check for accuracy, but paraphrased):
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“Aren’t you the She-Hulk?”
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“I get that a lot. I don’t see the resemblance.”
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And the guy starts apologizing to this green- skinned woman for confusing her with the She-Hulk. Her response:
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“Sheesh. Of course I’m the She-Hulk. Can’t you people take a joke?.”
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Or words to that effect.
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Since I’m using the reply function, I don’t know if this will appear directly below Mary Warner’s comment or at the bottom of this section, but in response to JamesLynch, whose comments may or may not appear below mine, I’m not familiar with “I Get That a Lot”, but recently saw something online where Jewel got together with a group of people who helped her alter her appearance slightly. They then all went to a karaoke bar where she, using a different name (let’s say “Susan”), sang some Jewel songs. A bit later, she returns as herself, making a surprise, impromptu appearance, and does a brief set. Then she leaves.
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Asked about it, some patrons said they actually thought “Susan” did a better job. In the end they were told the truth, that it had been Jewel all along. As I recall, she came back in a third time for the reveal.
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Oh, and in response to Robert Fuller’s question of whether Dr. Kimble darkened his hair, I think so. He did it in the TV series, but that was because the character of Richard Kimble had gray hair but David Janssen didn’t. Janssen wore a wig for the flashback scenes, and the hair dye bit allowed him to ditch the wig and look “like that guy who was in Richard Diamond, Private Detective..”
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Along similar lines, in the final episode of The Prisoner, there’s a sequence where the resurrected Number Two (Leo McKern) is given a shave and haircut in the process of being brought back to life? Why? Because in the several months between the filming of “Once upon a Time” and “Fall Out”, McKern had shaved his beard and cut his hair. Guess that shaving scene was considered the better choice than just giving him a wig and fake beard.
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Rick
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P.S. A few years ago at Borders, I saw a guy who looked a bit like PAD. And speaking of presidents, I was driving once and saw a guy who looked like Gary McGurk. “Hey, that looks like President Clark”, I thought.
I’m surprised David Janssen got away with it for four years!
“Asked about it, some patrons said they actually thought “Susan” did a better job.” I suppose it could be. Two possibilities, which I admit are not terribly likely, but … First, as ‘Susan’ she might not feel the pressure to perform in front of fans that she does as herself and thus perhaps sounded more ‘natural’. You’d think this wouldn’t be a problem with a professional performer, but who knows? Second, perhaps it’s the Boyle Effect (for want of a better term) where an unknown comes on and wows everyone with a marvelous voice. This will stick to memory. Then, when the pro comes on, well, it’s good, of course, but we expected that and it won’t be quite as memorable?
See, now if instead of shaving and changing his hair color lighter, he’d have grown it longer, maybe put on a heavy fur coat – why, NO ONE would be looking for a Wookie!
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And, y’know, even if they did… everyone knows the first rule. “Let the Wookie win.”
I was once asked if I was an actor. I responded that I was not and that I just played one on television.
As for Dr. Kimble, I thought he looked more like Russell Johnson after the haircut.